Why are some restaurants busier than others?Sometimes I go to restaurants and there's a lot of people there...

Better value, quality of food, service, more welcoming atmosphere etc etc etc.

One mans trash is another mans treasure, no? Who is to say one mans favorite isn't another mans least favorite? Therefore nobody can say one restaurant is superior to another. Everything is subjective. For every person that doesn't like a restaurant surely there is somebody else out there who does.

There's obviously a formula for restaurant success when McDonald's, Coca-cola and "hi" are the most commonly spoken words on the planet.

How do you know those words are the most spoken? Because the media told you they were?

Compiled government census'

Location plays a part in this. I've seen restaurants go out of business, another one opens in the same spot and they go out of business, then a third gives it a go with the same result. Some locations just don't work for restaurants. And sometimes they can be half a block from thriving restaurants. Go figure.

Then there's the matter of attracting customers who appreciate what the restaurant does. Probably not a good idea to open a high end vegetarian place in a sparsely populated rural area. Or a Latin Caribbean joint in a lilywhite suburb. Old school diners still do well in small towns, but in the City they're disappearing because people expect something better than diner food for the prices they have to charge to stay in business. You have to connect with the right demographic and hope that demographic has enough disposable to keep you in business.

How do you know you're note being lied to? Did you gather this information yourself?

That's some fancy talk right there mister. You think you're a detective or something?

>You think you're a detective
No, but I have been both a food writer and a wine sales rep. I have a lot of friends in the business.

What are your credentials? Prove it.

Did you seriously start a thread asking why some businesses aren't successful? And acting like a cunt to everyone who answers? Mcfucking kill yourself

I'm just trying to get their knowledge and see whether or not their bullshitting

>but it remains a mystery to me

I can't fix stupid or autistic, user.

*test their knowledge

I had a weekly column in a small neighborhood newspaper for about a year. Definitely had a few fans. The sales rep thing was a bit less successful, because it turned out I wasn't a very good salesman. But I did end up doing the wine lists for a couple places, one of which is still in business. And I still meet with the owner every couple months to work on their list. It's a sideline thing now. But I know a lot of people for whom it's a living.

Why should I believe you?

Bullshitting about what, you fucking moron? Do you think we're keeping some secret from you about how a restaurant operates?

You probably are. I doubt any of you work in the industry.

>Why are some restaurants busier than others?Sometimes I go to restaurants and there's a lot of people there, other restaurants... not so much. What's the deal?
When you're not in the know, and the restaurant isn't new, it always been an indicator that a restaurant is not worth going to when it's empty. Something happened. They had too many events of poor service or food, change of management, change of food quality, a really bad case of food poisoning, unclean bathrooms, unclean conditions, uncomfortable chairs, huge competition in town which has some kind of improvements in some way like price or quality, and simply said word of mouth happened and their sales are down. Sometimes there's only a breakfast crowd and lunch is always light.

There's no need to explain the draw for marketed chains located near interstates and other expensive high traffic parts of town. I think their quality has declined over the years, and I prefer to help out some mom and pop places if they're better, but you can't argue some franchises have good menus and are doing things shipshape perfectly.

The exception to busy means quality are higher end hotels, where the price of maintaining a great chef and quality restaurant is often completed by the hotel chain ends as a draw to clientele of status, to allow for huge conferences and intermittent, yet seasonal, catering draws. A hotel isn't as concerned with an unbusy Tuesday dinner crowd in their restaurant if they are bursting at the seams every Sunday brunch, and cater every office christimas party in the city.

>you don't work in the industry but I bet you're hiding secrets about it from me

Why would I make shit up on an anonymous message board? What do I have to gain from that?

Back on topic: economics plays a part, too. I have one buddy who ran a neighborhood tapas place. He kept the prices reasonable, so his customers were mostly middle class couples. When 2008 hit these customers felt the squeeze and stopped dining out as often, and the place went out of business. Another friend runs an upscale gastropub in a trendy neighborhood. His customers are more wealthy. 2008 was barely a hiccup for him because it didn't really effect the dining out budgets of his customers.The recession didn't stop rich people from eating at Cipriani restaurants ans Wall St guys from blowing thousands on wine at Veritas. But it did put a lot of good, mid-tier neighborhood joints out of business.

I hate you so much

Why

because you managed to successfully troll this board better than I ever have by being so plausibly retarded

And a place can still go out of business even when it's busy. Say you're running a successful place in a neighborhood where real estate values are increasing. Eventually you'll see a rent hike that will put you out of business even if you're never empty. That's what's closing Angelica in the East Village next month after a 40 year run. There was just no way they could make enough money doing what they do to cover how much the rent was going up.

Local rep is vital. My neighbourhood, we've killed 5 restaurants where we didnt like the food or owner in the last couple years.

Location location location

Practice makes perfect

did a 5 year old make this thread

Definitely.You can run a really overpriced mediocre restaurant that happens to be right on the beach and you'll probably do well enough seasonally. There will always be people who want to eat in a place with a view of the water, and they tend not to be all that critical or price sensitive. Same thing applies to tourist traps. You can command high prices without being all that good if you have a built in crowd.

>Local rep is vital. My neighbourhood, we've killed 5 restaurants where we didnt like the food or owner in the last couple years.
I can tell you that a new manager that hires all his tattoo'd alternative lifestyle friends as servers and staff can also, very quickly, kill a restaurant for conservative baby boomers. This can happen overnight in a matter of weeks.

Thankfully the boomers will all be in nursing homes soon, so that won't be an issue for much longer.

OP is a dunce or poor bait

I often see places that stay open for years while being perpetually empty and great spots that get filled with people no matter what they sell close down every other year and a new place opens only to share the same fate

How am I a dunce

This is wrong and that's why places do great or close down
Maybe in 3000 years in star wars time you will be able to say sure humans hate rotten eggs but sosophragans love them
As it is we are humans, we share genetics, there are a bunch of different cultures and unless you are foot on afrika or Asia everything is similar

This. These hepatitis ridden tattoo freaks touching my food or eating utensils literally makes me nauseous. Absolutely will not eat under those conditions. Yeah I'm a boomer, but nowhere near the nursing home. We won't eat in places staffed by you fucking freaks. When I was growing up, the only people that had tattoos were navy fucks that got them when they were drunk as fuck and regretted it as they aged. Disgusting.

Get out a here grandpa your generation ruined this country.

At the end of the day customers usually choose places they feel comfortable with, which means they align with the expectations of their class and cultural background. The people who eat at Cracker Barrel generally don't grab a beer and a quick bite and a beer at the Whole Foods food court.

Fuck the boomers, their stupid culture wars and shit taste in food.

There is a thing as the standard taste
You are born with a miniscule difference from the standard based on genetics
Add to that another miniscule difference based on the place you were born
Add to that another miniscule difference based on your income and another based on your diet
And that's it, a tiny variation from the standard taste that's all you have
Sure that one tribe with 200 people on Africa that has never seen a white man's dick loves to eat fresh cow shit but that an extremely rare case not the alternative to the norm
I would argue that there are two standard tastes, one for Asia and one for the rest of the world but maybe there is a third

>t. entitled millennial shitstains

Move out of your boomer parents basement and try working like we did. I lied about my age to get my first job washing dishes as a 9th grader. Rode my bike to work because I didn't have a driver's license. Go add some more needle ink "body art" to your pasty, sickly fucking skin.

And after a year you were probably able to afford a down on a 2 bedroom house with your dishwasher money.

Must have been nice when minimum wage was the equivalent of 15 dollars an hour.

>Being enough of a hilariously ignorant shitbag boomer that you actually pull the "Just work like I did back in the day!" card

Can't wait until you're dead and there's nothing left of you but your shit legacy

>There is a thing as the standard taste
It's more a matter of cultural and class expectations than anything else.
My parents weren't boomers, not am I a millennial.
>I lied about my age to get my first job washing dishes as a 9th grader.
Ha ha, you were a poorfag. No wonder you're so bitter about kids doing things you don't like. I wasn't poor enough to get a chip on my shoulder like that. I don't give a fuck what other people do.

I owned my own house when I was 27 years old, son. It was paid off in 10 years. The critical factor was I got my university degree without incurring debt, served 4 years as an officer in the army and got into software development. I do think you guys are forced to carry an unbearable burden of student debt which needs to be remedied, but I can't shoulder the blame for that. Same with medical costs. That's why I was with you faggots in supporting Sanders. But I'm still disgusted by the way you guys treat your bodies, what with the piercings and ink. Also, you seem lazy and weak as fuck as a generation. I really can't wait until Trump brings back the draft and you fuckers can get a taste of the real world.

>that flyover who can't stop bragging about how he owns a home in some unincorporated area that not even google street view cares about
Man, that's a blast from the past. I remember last summer it was basically every fucking thread.

>went to college when it cost a few hundred a semester

>got paid to dick around in the Army for a few years

>thinks anyone is impressed

It's all true though. Some people think staff should look like they are serving food in a hospital. Clean and groomed people, no mistakes in hygiene even obvious, because yes, hepatitus. It does work like that, where some "freak" to use your word hires all his trans buddies in like a club, and next thing you know, there's not just 1 person there who is kind of gross or off or makes people uncomfortable by opening flirting with every patron, but the whole staff has flipped to some new staff. That server you used to like for being perfection is over at some other restaurant now because they were replaced by a buddy of the manager. Instead of culling good and bad staff by service reasons, good competition, you now have people who have known each other for years and are dramatic and full of the baggage of people who have been shit on and mocked and so bleh, it's just not a nice place to be when there isn't diversity and free market anymore, but some kind of favortism of slackerdom.
Tattoos and choosing to have them does reflect on your numbers if your clients are all wearing them too. Restaurants shouldn't be the same thing Hot Topic. I want to see some sweet grandma making pies, a mexican patting out tortillas or working the grill, a hard working single mom, or some college student hustling orders to and from tables with the only goal to make you have no complaints with them for maximum tip, and maybe only the bartender a hipster. Manager should be seasoned and well trained, not sleeping with one of the owners.

>What's the deal?

>I do think you guys are forced to carry an unbearable burden of student debt which needs to be remedied, but I can't shoulder the blame for that. Same with medical costs.
Forced? No. Back before my day, you didn't get loans. Your parents paid, or you paid. Education wasn't a right after high school. It was you wanting to invest in yourself. You had to pay by check too, not credit cards.
I knew people who worked full time in retail while going to school full time or nearly full time and paid 100% of their tuition at community college and then state university, and yes, it's still $6-12k/year to do that. No debt. Some lived at home, some rented with roommates. No one forces you to incur debt, that's your entitledness. If you aren't going into the careers of the top 1% with competitiveness, don't do debt. Private college and going into teaching? Are you stupid? Even Obama wanted to outlaw debt for that. Go do a 1 year trade course like home health or air conditioning, work weekends and go to school at night and watch yourself be debt free. You should be able to do the 2 year plan to get your head above water. Think like an immigrant thinks. Work hard while you're young. Don't kick off at 5PM. Get a second job. Sell some shit at festivals. Work Saturday at a restaurant. Teach kids to wind surf after school.
Medical costs? I was buying my own health insurance at $1000/mo in 1989 from Mutual of Omaha, there was no state HMO prices at that time only big corporate plans. If your employer didn't have insurance, you bought major medical so you didn't have an emergency that landed you in a lifetime of debt. It's called good advice from my parents. It was a sacrifice. A big one. Today? You can pay $1000/mo and get better coverage. Before obamacare, you could pay $500-750 and get good coverage if you were healthy and wanted to exclude things you didn't want like pregnancy or certain prescriptions.

If I go to a hipster pizza dungeon with hyperlocal beer on tap, I expect to see tatted up hipsters as part of the atmosphere of dingy oppression and pizza.

Eat shit, I'm going to go to my private college and get my degree in psychology and shit up your social security checks with years of unemployment because having a work ethic is queer as fuck with zero payoff.

> I lied about my age to get my first job

Yeah, good luck getting around that with computer background checks now dickhead

_ ___ __ ____ ____ ___.

This guy knows what's up. I'm 30 (technically "millennial" by boomer standards) and been working since I was 12 to save $50k before I was 25. Nu-males need to git fkn gud.

Didn't say anyone should be impressed, but it wasn't living with my parents. Flyover is bad for certain things, but other things really good. My deer stand is 200 yards from my house and I grow my own vegetables. I forage wild edibles too. I have a paid off 2100 sqft home that I heat with wood I cut and chop from empty woods nearby.

Grow up millennial. I said you guys are getting fucked by the absurd medical and education costs. What do you want me to do, change your diapers?

I made a ton of money during the 2008-11 period. During the boom in the 90's I was the poorest person I knew.

I’m convinced this place is cursed.

It was built as a Stag & Hound fine dining restaurant back in the 1970s and has changed hands dozens of times since then but none of them have lasted very long.

It’s a nice building with lots of room inside and plenty of parking and it’s just down the street from GM’s Tech Center here in Warren MI but for whatever reason, nobody has any kinda long term success with the place.

Because there is church carpet on the floor there.

The sheer number of people from MI on this board and Veeky Forums bewilders me.

Do they serve beer? If not, and if none of those places did, that's why they don't get business from the Tech Center. If it's not delivery or severs beer, as per the word of God from former GM employees I know, they won't ever set foot in there. Regular people don't go because they think auto workers will be there and don't want to be around smelly, crude blue-collar types (I don't think this but many people do; to be fair, auto-workers are crude almost universally) catcalling waitresses and being obnoxious. So it's a ghost town.

Why

>Do they serve beer?

Shields Pizza did and after that, so did the Rub's BBQ it became.

> So it's a ghost town.

Oh, ok. So you've never been here, got it.

me on the right